Get ready for a culinary throwdown when Cook Serve Forever launches in May

Supercharged cooking game Cook Serve Forever will hit early access on May 8, news accompanied by a new trailer looking at the next cooking adventure from development studio Vertigo Gaming Inc. The trailer explains the all-new characters and setup for the game, which is similar to but not a sequel to the prior Cook Serve releases.

"Cook Serve Forever is a cooking adventure game where you play as Nori Kaga, a home-taught chef with nothing to her name but a food cart and a dream. Manage your menu, learn delicious recipes, and meet a diverse cast of friends and foes on your way to culinary greatness," says the official description.

Just as whimsically set as ever, Cook Serve Forever will be set in a near-future ecologically charged solarpunk city where a guidebook/competition known as the Couteau d'Or chronicles the greatest chefs in the world. Your goal, as Nori Kaga, is to get your name in that book alongside your personal hero, chef Rhubarb.

To do it you'll manage your food cart menu and offerings with the greatest skill you can muster. Gameplay in Cook Serve Forever will be an "all new dynamic cooking system" with "hundreds of new ingredients and recipes" that's intended to, like in Vertigo's earlier games, feel like the rhythmic and tactile process of cooking. The early access release will have "roughly the first 25% of the game," and future releases will include a local co-op mode for the entire campaign, which Vertigo is aiming to release the summer of this year.

Cook Serve Forever is the latest game from Vertigo Gaming Inc, and a continuation of the game designs they kicked off in the Cook, Serve, Delicious! series. Though it's by all appearances a standalone story and world, it definitely has that same whimsical setting and strange futuristic characters that made those games charming. Emma Davies called the third game "as stressful and satisfying as searing the perfect sirloin" in our 2020 Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! review.

Cook Serve Forever will launch on Steam, where it'll cost $30. If you own Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! it'll be 10% off, or 20% off if you own the entire Cook, Serve, Delicious! trilogy. It'll also be 10% off for the first week after launch, which stacks for previous owners.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.